Beatboxing shares its roots with MCs and drum machines.

People who couldn’t afford an 808 or a synth had to find new ways to create beats. It didn’t take long for them to experiment with vocal techniques that came to be known as beatboxing.

The art of vocal percussion has been around for centuries. Perhaps the best known reference from early contemporary culture is from the Barber shop quartets who would keep time with tongue clicks and short sharp inhaling – a skill that evolved into the inward snare, a technique still used by beatboxers today. Blues musicians also used claps and clicks to simulate drum lines and low humming noises to emulate bass lines. It wasn’t long before they were imitating actual drum noises like the 'sshsch' of the brushed snare or the 'ts' of the hi-hat.

Today Beatboxing has evolved far beyond simple clicks and snaps.

New sounds are being developed everyday and vocal percussionist have been featured in genres like rock, pop, country, electronic and even classical. Looking back it’s hard to imagine those guys keeping time in a Barber Shop quartet on the wrong side of the tracks were laying the foundation for an international community of Beatboxers some of who have signed multimillion dollar record deals. Maybe the next onewill be you?